


oh brave and small

by hongmunmu



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Reflection, Short, Vulnerability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 04:01:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9367097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hongmunmu/pseuds/hongmunmu
Summary: Aveline is alone in Kirkwall, for now.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i imagined aveline to go through a bit of depression, at LEAST during the first year in kirkwall. the city hates fereldans/refugees, she doesn't know anyone other than hawke and their family (who will be busy paying off their debt anyway), and, well, her husband just died. in front of her. by her hand. aveline always puts on a tough face and i wanted to explore her vulnerability more, what she doesn't tell hawke.

She thought of him in those cold, cold mornings, alone in her meagre bunk, the first one awake in the barracks at the crack of dawn. Where she had once woken up to the warm arms of her lover she now woke to _Fereldan Bitch_ graffitied over the name plate by her bed, dog shit smeared on her armour. Kirkwall was humid at that time of year, but the hostility in the Viscount’s Keep chilled the city guard to its bones and left Aveline shivering as she woke. 

It wasn’t that it was new to her, being alone. She’d been apart from him much of the time, anyway, he in Denerim and she at Ostagar. But it was the knowledge that he would be waiting for her to return home that kept her going, and without that, she was unsure what else she had. 

There was Hawke. No forgetting a woman like that. But Hawke had her own battles to fight, however illegal those battles might be, and Aveline’s armistice day was still far, far off. 

Oh, Wesley. 

He hadn’t always been good to her. No man had, nor were they ever likely to. But she had loved him. Her holy, salt-of-the-Earth knight of a husband. 

He’d had a temper. That, they’d joked about— _templar with a temper._ Always on the prowl, seeing an enemy at every corner, and for that she’d feared, sometimes. But when all had been said and done, he was there for _her._ Not the soldier, but the woman, the battered woman with burns and scars and all the rest. And through all his rage and hatred she’d seen something soft, and with her square jaw and broad shoulders, he’d called her beautiful. 

And when she had been strong in months of service she could finally return to him, and he’d let her be small, and weak, for once in her tower of a life. 

She felt small without him, now. It was not a relief any longer. Always the brave woman with a sword, a dirty bulldog bitch pretending to protect what was long lost. He’d died by her hand, both on the literal and symbolic level, and that was a coffin she’d carry until her dying day. 

Aveline Vallen knew there were times to let yourself be weak, and times to bare your teeth and howl at those who’d kick you and what you love into the dust. Now was neither of those times. Now was a Passover, a liminal space of her own making, alone in a room full of sleeping Marchers. 

But for now her strength is quiet. She scrubs the shit off her armour. She stands up straight. She puts on her boots, and ties up her hair, and faces the city with a sword at her side and Wesley’s shield on her back.

They wouldn’t know what hit them. 


End file.
